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> Later that day, you find out Icelandi completely refunded Thor, Bjork's little brother, for all the money he had lost, but every other child at school also lo

> Later that day, you find out Icelandi completely refunded Thor, Bjork's little brother, for all the money he had lost, but every other child at school also lost all their money. It's important to note that Icelandi didn't refund Thor out of her own (Icelandi's) own pocket. Instead, she took the money to reimburse Thor from what remained of the pool of money that Bjork had collected from everyone. In effect, Thor was reimbursed in full at everyone else's expense. If you look at a graph of Iceland's GDP, you can see a gently upwardly-curving trend from 1960 thru today, with a massive, abberrant spike sticking up from the trendline from 2004-2008. That's how Icelandi bought her shiny new car.

ItendToDisagree 13y ago
There is a saying in Tennessee, well its a saying in Texas, I'm sure its in Tennessee too. "If can't spot the sucker after your first half hour at the table you are the sucker." But really... If bailing out all the foreign investors with the Icelandic public's money (who by and large didn't court the foreign investors in the first place) is the other option... It seems sort of obvious what a country that cares about, or pretends to care about, it's public at large (rather than just its banking elite and financial industry in general) would do. Not saying it's 'right' or 'wrong' really, but when people invested large amounts of money overseas (into Iceland from wherever) they were gambling and hoping for a gain they couldn't get at home. Sometimes you get burned when you take risks. Sometimes you don't.
- jackgavigan 13y ago
  People didn't invest large amounts of money overseas. This was not a case of greedy people putting money into some dodgy offshore scheme. That's not what happened at all. People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands. We're not talking about investors - we're talking about depositors, who were supposed to have been protected by a deposit guarantee scheme in the banks' home country.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    That is not the story afaik (though I'd happily accept being shown otherwise). There was a great deal of investment 'overseas'. It truly sucks that depositors (who were storing their money in an overseas institution for a better rate) got burned. But I think it is naive to say that the majority of the money lost was simply people storing their paychecks in the bank. The entire finance game was rigged in the first place (as many events have shown) and it seems like everyone was going to get f'd by no fault of their own. Iceland protecting their public (at the expense of their financial industry) and actually prosecuting (some) of those at fault seems a damn sight better than just having everyone pay out the nose (which happened anyway) and letting gamblers get off with no risk.
  - randomafrican 13y ago
    >People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands. Weren't many of those branches of Icelandic banks seized/nationalized/prevented from repatriating any capital to Iceland all over Europe ?

ItendToDisagree 13y ago

There is a saying in Tennessee, well its a saying in Texas, I'm sure its in Tennessee too. "If can't spot the sucker after your first half hour at the table you are the sucker." But really... If bailing out all the foreign investors with the Icelandic public's money (who by and large didn't court the foreign investors in the first place) is the other option... It seems sort of obvious what a country that cares about, or pretends to care about, it's public at large (rather than just its banking elite and financial industry in general) would do. Not saying it's 'right' or 'wrong' really, but when people invested large amounts of money overseas (into Iceland from wherever) they were gambling and hoping for a gain they couldn't get at home. Sometimes you get burned when you take risks. Sometimes you don't.

jackgavigan 13y ago
People didn't invest large amounts of money overseas. This was not a case of greedy people putting money into some dodgy offshore scheme. That's not what happened at all. People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands. We're not talking about investors - we're talking about depositors, who were supposed to have been protected by a deposit guarantee scheme in the banks' home country.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  That is not the story afaik (though I'd happily accept being shown otherwise). There was a great deal of investment 'overseas'. It truly sucks that depositors (who were storing their money in an overseas institution for a better rate) got burned. But I think it is naive to say that the majority of the money lost was simply people storing their paychecks in the bank. The entire finance game was rigged in the first place (as many events have shown) and it seems like everyone was going to get f'd by no fault of their own. Iceland protecting their public (at the expense of their financial industry) and actually prosecuting (some) of those at fault seems a damn sight better than just having everyone pay out the nose (which happened anyway) and letting gamblers get off with no risk.
- randomafrican 13y ago
  >People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands. Weren't many of those branches of Icelandic banks seized/nationalized/prevented from repatriating any capital to Iceland all over Europe ?